


Mix and Matchmaker

by Mikkeneko



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Bodyswap, Crack, F/M, Humor, Involuntary use of magical bodily functions, M/M, Masturbation, Mokona discovers puberty, Sexual Humor, ariel the libertarian dragon gives his thoughts on taxation, assorted other embarrassments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Are you the doctors?" Yamazaki asked.</p><p>Fai looked around at the picture they painted: one hulking black-clad ninja (with flawlessly smooth skin and enameled nails,) one wizard surreptitiously trying and not very well succeeding at concealing a sword behind his back, one teenage boy doing pirouettes on the dining room table, one pink-eared muppet, and one practically prepubescent girl. "Yes," he said. "We're... doctors. Doctors, is exactly what we are."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mix and Matchmaker

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the [2014 Kurofai Olympics](http://kurofai.dreamwidth.org/tag/2014+olympics) (which is _still going on, right now!)_ Comedy vs Drama edition. Obviously, this was written for Team Comedy. If you enjoy this fic and would like to see more like it - or even if you didn't enjoy it and want to see more not like it - head on over to Dreamwidth and check them out. Voting will be open until May 18th, and we really need more readers and voters for the contest entries!

"Well," Fai said, " _this_ is an interesting development."

Fai studied his hands with great bemusement. They were much smaller and slimmer than the hands he'd been used to, lacking in familiar callouses, and with the edges of the fingernails chewed nearly raw in a childish anxious habit. His voice reverberated weirdly in his chest, coming out much higher and than normal and with some _very_ strange dimensions.

It wasn't that the voice was unfamiliar, oh no.

It just wasn't _his._

Cinnamon-colored hair fell around the edges of Fai's vision, far darker and ruddier than his own hair color should be. By the time Fai lifted one knee and peeked down at his - _her -_ legs, skinny and knob-kneed under the pale pink fabric of the short skirt _she_ wore - the evidence was almost redundant. A mirror would have clinched it, of course, but really what would he do with one? Gape stupidly at his reflection and poke at his own face as though touching it would dispel the illusion?

But much of Fai's lifelong training as a mage revolved around the very simple maxim "Don't panic." (There was also something about tea and towels in the curriciulum, but "don't panic" was the important bit.) It sounded simple, but when the transposition of two simple characters in a rune-word could change a spell from "summon hot water for bath" to "summon raging hot water avatar from the elemental plane of steam," it was very vital to keep a calm and steady head in the face of even the most unlikely circumstance.

Fai looked up from his bemused contemplation of his newly-female appendages and took stock of their situation. They had landed somewhat ungracefully in a wide green meadow in what appeared to be spring. (Fai had learned to pick up on many subtle clues that could tell him what the season was, such as budding leaves on the trees, new flowers shyly opening their petals to the sun, and a pair of bunnies enthusiastically fucking in the grass nearby.) The plush grass had turned out to be a blessing, since all five of them were currently sprawled on their asses in it.

Although they had all gotten a great deal of practice in keeping their footing through these landings, the surprising weightlessness of his body - _new_ body - had sent Fai tumbling. As he did a quick inventory of his traveling companions, he guessed from the struggling and flailing to find their balance, that they were all similarly afflicted.

Well, it made sense.

"So, it looks like I'm Sakura-chan right now," he said cheerfully, standing up and dusting off the pink skirt. "Now I'm just guessing here, but you would _think_ this also means that Sakura-chan is in my body right now! Isn't that right?" he said, smiling in the direction of his own tall, thin, white-clad body that was just now getting to its feet.

And met him with a fierce, flat, blue-eyed glower. "Nice fucking try," Fai's voice snapped at him. He crossed his arms over his chest, wearing an expression of deepest exasperation that Fai had seen ( _and caused)_ so many times that it could not fail to be familiar.

Fai's eyes (well, Sakura's eyes) widened, and he covered his mouth with one hand. "Kuro-wan?" he squeaked. Oh, oh, this could be _terrible._ (Or terribly hilarious. Or both.) "Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me," Kurogane-in-Fai's-body affirmed in a tone of deep disgust. "Just when I think this trip can't get any weirder, we go along and something like _this_ happens. You'd think I'd know by now, never assume we've sunk so low we can't go lower."

"But if I'm in Sakura's body," Fai said, "and Kuro-jinx is in _my_ body, then where is Sakura-chan?"

"Um," a small voice squeaked from not far away. The two of them turned around simultaneously, Fai-in-Sakura and Kurogane-in-Fai, to see the tall, dark-haired ninja slowly and sheepishly raise his hand in the air. "I... I'm not _sure_ what happened... but I think I'm... in... Kurogane-san?"

Fai and Kurogane both stared. "Oh _no_ ," Kurogane-in-Fai said, voice rich with a kind of horrified disbelief.

Kurogane's face fell, a remorseful expression stealing over those stern features, and he ducked his head and rubbed his hands together while a sheepish blush spread over his cheeks. It was, bar none, the _cutest damn expression_ that Fai had ever seen on Kurogane's face. "Sorry," Sakura-in-Kurogane mumbled.

"Oh _yes,"_ Fai-in-Sakura countered, barely able to counter the grin that spread over his face.

"I fucking _hate magic!"_ Kurogane-in-Fai yelled at the sky.

Fai, meanwhile, was busy ticking off the changes on Sakura's fingers. "So I got moved into Sakura's body, Sakura got moved into Kuro-tantrum's body, and Kuro-tan got moved into mine," he mused. "So it seems we've all gone round-about. The only thing I don't understand is, why wasn't Syaoran-kun affected?"

"Really? _That's_ the part of this you don't understand?" Kurogane-in-Fai demanded incredulously. "We've been dropped into a nightmare where _I'm in completely the wrong body_ and your only question is why the kid got left out?"

"And don't forget about Moko-chan, too," Sakura-in-Kurogane pointed out helpfully. "After all, she's a person too."

Fai and Kurogane exchanged glances. "You don't suppose..." Kurogane began.

They looked over towards the last two members of their team: Syaoran, who had been holding Mokona in his arms during the transition. The little white critter was standing bolt upright in Syaoran's arms, rigid and trembling, her eyes big and round with horror.

"I don't understand what just happened," she gasped. "I..."

"Syaoran-kun?" Sakura-in-Kurogane asked in dismay. "Is that you? But if that _is_ you, then where is..."

Syaoran's hand shot into the air.

"Mokona is Mokona!" he chirped in a high, almost falsetto voice. "Except, well, that right now Mokona is actually Syaoran! And Mokona is betting that Syaoran is actually Mokona! Unless there are two Mokonas right now for some reason, which would be okay? But Mokona will _always_ be Mokona _deep down_ where it counts, in the heart!"

Mokona (or rather, Syaoran-in-Mokona) let out a noise that was halfway between a moan and a shriek. "I'm a _muppet!"_ he wailed. "How could this have _happened?"_

Mokona-in-Syaoran gave a loud, offended sniff. "Mokona thinks that is very rude of Syaoran," she declared. "Mokona is not a _muppet,_ Mokona is _very cute_ and _agile_ and capable of _all sorts of things._ It's not any more fun being in the body of a big gangly monkey, you know!"

"Hey!" Syaoran-in-Mokona objected, momentarily distracted from his existential horror.

"Mokona is always very cute," Fai told her soothingly. "Big gangly monkey or no, Syaoran's body is not too hard on the eyes either, is it? Just ask Sakura-chan."

He'd said this mostly with the calculated aim of making Sakura-in-Kurogane blush again, and it worked like a charm; Kurogane's face nearly went purple with the force of it. "Oh, I definitely wouldn't be the one to say," she gasped out. "But, um, I think you look very... very nice, Moko-chan!"

"Enough of this," Kurogane-in-Fai snarled, striding over to glare at the unlikely pair. "The important question is _how did this happen?"_

"Hmph," Mokona sniffed again, then flopped down on the grass and put Syaoran's hands to his chin. "Well, Mokona isn't _sure,_ since it's never actually happened before, but... you know, when we go in and out of a world, our souls get really _loose,_ you know?"

Kurogane-in-Fai choked slightly, but didn't otherwise comment, which left Fai to pick up the thread. "...I don't think I do know, Mokona," he said after a pause. "Do you think you could explain that in slightly more, er, technical detail?"

Mokona pouted. "Mokona will _try,_ " she said in a voice that conveyed a deep skepticism for these 'gangly monkeys' ability to understand complicated interdimensional matter/spirit interactions. "It isn't _easy_ to get from one world to the next, no matter how easy Mokona makes it look! Sometimes the entrance to a new world is really _tight,_ and then Mokona has to work and work to make it open up, until finally we can just _slide_ in there, but it's still a really tight fit, so you just have to push and push and _push_ until it goes _pop!_ And then we're inside."

It was almost interesting, Fai thought absently, to check to see who among his companions was and wasn't getting the nuances of Mokona's speech. Kurogane-in-Fai looked near apoplectic, while Syaoran-in-Mokona was going progressively more and more rigid in horror. Only Sakura-in-Kurogane looked on with an uncomprehendingly blank expression, which was probably just as well. "I... see," Fai choked out. "But I don't think I quite see what this has to do with us not being in our usual bodies this time around."

Mokona rolled Syaoran's eyes expressively. "Because we do it so many times, of course!" she exclaimed. "The more you travel between dimensions, the more elastic the connection between the soul and the body gets, because of all these tight spaces we have to squeeze into. So sometimes, if the fit is especially tight, and if our souls are still very loose from the last transfer, they just sort of get... _squeezed out_ of our bodies!"

Everyone paused for a moment to contemplate this mental image. Sakura-in-Kurogane ventured, "Like toothpaste out of a tube?"

" _Yes,_ exactly like that," Fai said hastily. "Toothpaste, yes, definitely not like anything else. Definitely not."

"Who cares how it happened?" Kurogane-in-Fai demanded (rather inconsistently, Fai thought, since barely eight paragraphs ago _he'd_ been the one demanding answers.) "The important part is, how do we get _back_ in our proper bodies?"

"Well, you see, right now the connections between our souls and our bodies are really _stretched,"_ Mokona explained with relish. "They're just absolutely _tight._ So if there could just be something to give them a push, a nice, big -"

"'Scuse me, but do you think we could get through this conversation without any more resorting to sex metaphors?" Kurogane-in-Fai interrupted.

Mokona-in-Syaoran looked deeply offended. "Mokona _wasn't,_ " she sniffed with injured dignity. "It's not _Mokona's_ fault that everybody else has dirty minds."

"What metaphors?" Sakura-in-Kurogane asked blankly.

Fai interrupted before anybody could attempt to explain and make things worse. "So from what Mokona is saying, any kind of magical jolt ought to jar us loose and put us back in our own bodies," he said.

"Yes, Fai has it!" Mokona nodded enthusiastically, bobbling Syaoran's head like it was on a string.

Fai turned to Mokona. "A magical jolt like, say, traveling between worlds?"

Syaoran and Sakura immediately set up a clamor. "Oh, but we can't -" "But we haven't found a feather in this world yet!" Syaoran-in-Mokona wailed in protest.

"To hell with that!" Kurogane-in-Fai said callously. "I want to get back into my proper body _right now._ Pork bun, take us out of here."

"Mokona was going to _say,"_ Mokona-in-Syaoran said reproachfully. "Right now _Mokona_ can't do it, because Mokona isn't Mokona! It would have to be Syaoran who does it."

Sakura widened Kurogane's eyes. "Syaoran-kun? _Can_ you do it?" she said, torn between doubt and hope.

Syaoran looked deeply conflicted, at least as deeply conflicted as a mostly featureless white ball of fur could manage to look, but it was clear he had no power to resist Sakura's requests. "O-Okay," he stammered.

There was a pause.

"Um, Mokona?" Syaoran said nervously. "How _do_ you make the magic circle come out, anyway?"

Mokona-in-Syaoran gave her old body a deeply pitying look. "It's really simple!" she exclaimed. "You just have to bunch yourself up, like this, _ahhhhnnn,_ with blue energy. And then when the blue energy gets cloistered like oranges, you go - _puuuuuu -_ and if you get it just in D minor minor, the magic circle appears! Easy."

"I am seriously perturbed that you thought that made any kind of sense at all," Kurogane-in-Fai said, staring at Mokona.

"I am seriously kind of perturbed that it did," Fai admitted. "Well? Syaoran-kun?"

Syaoran looked almost on the verge of tears, but at Sakura-in-Kurogane's earnest, shining-eyes look, he capitulated. "I'll try," he said.

The four travelers leaned in and stared at Syaoran, willing him to transport them away from this world. Sakura clasped Kurogane's hands under her chin, Kurogane crossed Fai's arms over his chest, and Fai held Sakura's breath. "You can do it!" Mokona cheered.

For a moment Mokona's body glowed a familiar gold, and all the travelers prepared to exclaim with joy.

"Ahhhhhhn - _puuuuuuuu!"_ Syaoran shrieked aloud, and opened Mokona's mouth as a rush of color erupted from it. The four of them dodged every which way, arms up to shield their faces, as they were nearly buried in a sudden, pungent-smelling avalanche of novelty soaps.

Mokona shook Syaoran's head and tsked judgmentally. "Rookie mistake," she declared. "Too much oranges."

* * *

"I still say we should just leave!" Kurogane argued, even though he knew it was hopeless: he'd been outnumbered and outvoted. (He'd tried to argue that properly speaking, he ought to get _two_ votes, one for Kuro and one for Little Kuro, but Fai had told him quite bluntly that by that logic, Sakura should get _three.)_

Fai shook his head, not bothering to look back at Kurogane as he led the way through the streets of the small town they'd come to. "We've been over this already, Kuro-juxtapose," he called back in Sakura's sweet, silvery tones. "Syaoran can't make the dimensional-travel magic work."

"I still say he gave up too soon," Kurogane grumbled. "I mean, how hard can it be?"

"Easy for Kurogane to say!" Mokona chirped. She was carrying her old body in the crook of one arm, an accustomed pose for the two of them; Syaoran was flat on his back and insensible after repeated failed attempts to call the correct magical circle had failed. (Though they had been treated to a sudden blast of blizzard weather in the middle of a spring afternoon, a stunning rendition of Pachelbel's Canon in D coming out of nowhere, and a small avalanche of expired batteries before he'd crapped out.)

A _crash_ sounded from the street behind them, where Sakura had gotten Kurogane's cloak caught on a street vendor cart and pulled it over to the paving stones below. "Oh, I'm so sorry," Sakura apologized in Kurogane's voice.

"Well, if the alternative is staying stuck like this for the rest of our lives, I don't see how that's any better!" Kurogane yelled. "I want to go home! And in _my_ body, not some secondhand piece of crap!"

"Now, now," Fai said, and the look he gave Kurogane out of the corner of his eye had a glint to it that made a cold sweat break out all over his back. "Be nice. There _are_ other ways to produce a magical jolt of the kind we need - all we need is a large enough power source, and Mokona can do it even in Syaoran's body."

Another _crash._ "I'm sorry!" Sakura apologized again, and Kurogane felt a vein throb. He understood that she was in a body that was bigger and stronger than she was used to, but _seriously,_ how clumsy could she _be?_

"A power source like Sakura's feather!" Mokona enthused. "So we just have to find the feather, and then we can get back in our bodies _and_ go on to the next world all finished! Kill two birds with one stone, wheee!"

Kurogane sighed, but he had to admit that as tenuous as that plan sounded, he really didn't have anything better. Technically, the body he was _in_ had just the sort of magical power they needed, but Kurogane had absolutely no idea how to use it and Fai, being his typical unhelpful self, had refused to give Kurogane even the most basic of pointers. Kurogane was impatient, but he'd spent enough time around the Tsukuyomi growing up that even he knew better than to experiment with power he didn't understand. _One_ giant lake-troll rampaging through the O-Bon festival on a crazed binge for pickled squid had been _plenty._

(When asked about it later, Tomoyo had protested that she'd had no visions of the festival at all, and had had _no idea_ that that particular combination of songs and ritual chants on that particular night would summon the lake-troll. Personally, Kurogane suspected that she _had_ seen it coming, but let it happen anyway because she thought it was funny.)

"Here we are," Fai said, stopping in front of a large, multi-story wooden building. The walls were thick white plaster between dark wooden beams running horizontally and vertically, defining the frame of the house. Each square panel was strapped crosswise by more dark wooden planks, and the second story loomed out slightly above the first, giving the impression that the building was being strapped tightly together to prevent it from oozing out at the seams.

"This is the inn that old guy recommended?" Kurogane asked skeptically. He supposed it didn't really matter what their lodging looked like as long as it kept the rain off their heads, but it just looked so... unbalanced.

"Apparently." Fai pushed open the door and went in, Kurogane and Mokona trailing behind.

Sakura brought up the rear, and the horrible _crunch_ that sounded when she pulled the door shut attested that she'd just manage to rip the hinges out of the wood. "Oh, sorry!" she gasped. Kurogane rubbed his forehead and sighed. They'd better find that damn feather, _fast._

The inside of the tavern was wide-open and poorly lit, and a man with a rag in his hand jumped up from where he had been wiping down the bar and hurried over to them. "Oh, guests, guests!" he exclaimed, beaming at Kurogane and Sakura. "Welcome! How can I help you?"

Normally, they let Syaoran handle most of the public interactions in a new place, his unthreatening appearance and earnest demeanor serving to put people at ease. Right now, though, Syaoran was still completely out of commission, so Fai stepped forward instead. "Hi, we'd like a place to stay for the night," he said, smiling brightly.

The innkeeper looked a little taken aback, and his gaze moved from one party member to the other hesitantly, as if wondering why none of the adult men were taking charge of this interaction. But Sakura in Kurogane's body hung back shyly, Kurogane himself was in no mood to talk to peons, and Mokona had apparently forgotten she was a human body right now; she was doing her best stiff-inanimate-doll impersonation that she always did when meeting strangers in a new world. On Syaoran's body, the effect was somewhere between hilarious and disturbingly mannequin-like.

"Er... sure, little lady," the innkeep said at last, returning his attention to Fai. "There's plenty of space. How many nights will you be staying?"

"We don't know yet how long our business in town will take," Fai said, still smiling his best public-company smile. "We'll take one room, or two depending. What are your rates?"

"Forty denar a night, but, uh," the innkeeper's expression suddenly shifted, looking half sly and half anxious. "How would you each like a room of your own? Each with its own attached bath? I can knock the price down to twenty-five per night if you want to spread out a little, have some privacy and space for yourself. I'm sure you don't all want to be crowded together for such a long time, and it really is a great deal!"

Fai raised his eyebrows. "Won't you want to save those rooms for other customers, though?" he said.

The innkeeper groaned wearily. "To tell you the truth, business has been abysmal lately," he confided. "With all the strange things happening in town, _nobody_ wants to travel right now. Are you sure you don't want to take the four rooms? I'll throw in breakfast each morning for twenty-six!"

"Strange things happening?" Sakura cut in, sounding worried. "What strange things?"

The innkeep hesitated. "Nothing you need to concern yourself about, I'm sure," he said evasively. "Anyway, you don't want to travel right now, it's not safe to go through the mountain passes. You'll have plenty of time to finish your business!"

The travelers exchanged significant glances. Strange happenings in the town, and danger in the mountains, spelled one of Sakura's feathers to them. But they were all tired and shaken from the day's events, and it would take a little longer to get the townspeople to open up to them.

"Do you think we should?" Sakura asked, directing her question at Kurogane and Fai.

"It should be fine," Kurogane replied. They had plenty of local currency to start with; they had passed through a flea market on their way to the inn, and the novelty soaps had fetched a surprisingly hefty price. Unless they ended up stuck here for weeks on end, they were in no danger of running out of money. "Not like we need to save it for anything."

Fai nodded, and turned back to the innkeeper, who was looking more and more confused. "We'll take the four rooms," he announced.

The innkeeper showed them up the stairs to where their rooms would be - four in a row, along the end of the corridor - and then left them to themselves. They returned to the common room for a while to eat a late dinner and make plans, but all four of them were tired and distracted. They agreed to canvass the town the next day in search of rumors and leads for Sakura's feather; if nothing panned out there, they might have to venture out of the town in search of the disturbance the landlord had mentioned in the mountain. But Mokona seemed sure that she had gotten them in the right location the first time.

Now that the stranger was out of the room, Mokona had recovered her usual ebullient personality; the new difficulty was in convincing her, in Syaoran's body, to get down off the tables and to walk places rather than leaping and sprinting across the room as though Syaoran had accidentally sat on a hot coal.

Mokona sulked and pouted at these restrictions all throughout their planning session, and at last announced that she was going to bed and taken Syaoran off upstairs in a huff.

"Well," Sakura said with a sigh once Mokona was out of sight, "I guess I'd better go get ready for bed."

"Princess," Kurogane began, filled with misgivings but unable to just say nothing. "Are you sure you're going to, uh... be okay? With... the different body and everything?"

"Do you at least have an idea of what to, er, expect?" Fai chimed in seriously.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Of course. I _do_ have an older brother, remember?"

"Oh. Right," Kurogane said, although in all honestly he'd forgotten.

Sakura frowned, and the expression came closer to looking natural on Kurogane's face than anything else she'd shown so far. "It's not really fair, you know," she said petulantly. "Of all the memories I've lost and can't get back, and the one I _do_ get back is of the one time Touya forgot to lock the bathroom door, and I walked in on him shaving... naked."

Kurogane blinked. "Wait, why would he have to be naked to shave?" he asked. "Shaving cream's not _that_ messy, if you keep it where it's supposed to be on the face."

Sakura shuddered. "I didn't say he was shaving his _face,"_ she said.

Kurogane winced, his legs closing half-instinctively as her meaning sank in. "Ah," Fai said, sounding simultaneously enlightened and amused.

Sakura turned to mount the stairs to the bathroom. "He got an awful shock, with me barging in like that," she tossed over her shoulder. "Dad said that he was lucky the razor wasn't an inch to the right, or the royal dynasty would be ended before it even began."

She disappeared up the stairs, giggling as she went.

 _Giggling._ In _his_ voice. There was really no other way to describe that noise. It wasn't a chortle, or an evil chuckle, or a bone-chilling laugh. It was undeniably, unarguably, a girlish giggle. Kurogane covered his eyes, wishing he could just shut out the injustice of the world for five minutes.

"Oh," Fai said suddenly, jolting Kurogane out of his slump of despair. "Sakura-chan might be okay, but did any of us think to warn -"

Syaoran's voice suddenly shattered the calm atmosphere in an ear-piercing screech. " _Mokona doesn't like it!"_

* * *

Kurogane splashed water over his hands (well, Fai's hands) (fuck it, they were _his hands_ right now, and if he kept on double-thinking the whole time he was going to go crazy) in his room's washbasin, preparing for sleep. It was a little weird to have a room to himself again; he'd been bunking with anywhere between one to five hundred other grown men (in various states of cleanliness) ever since this adventure had started. Weird to have a little privacy for a change, but definitely not _unwelcome._

He glanced up at the mirror set above the washbasin, and his attention was caught by the reflection staring out of that mirror at him. Strange, for all he'd been walking around in Fai's body all afternoon, this was the first chance he'd had to really _see_ it. It really drove the truth of his current situation home, to see Fai's reflection moving as he moved, breathing as he breathed, the expression on that familiar face shifting with his own thoughts.

Fai's face looked _different_ without Fai in it; Kurogane had never realized just how much the force of his personality shone through his features even when he had that stupid blank smile stuck on. It was like seeing a whole new side of his lover, but even the slightly alien quality of seeing him reversed in a mirror did nothing but heighten the alluring beauty that Fai had used to make a fool of him in the first place. He still really had no idea how'd they'd ended up together in the first place. For ages Fai had driven him crazy and they'd fought like cats and dogs, and then one day it just seemed like he tripped over an ottoman and landed on Fai's cock, and it had been all downhill from there. _Stupid sexy Fai._

Kurogane leaned forward over the washbasin, turning his head from side to side as he ran a finger over the cheekbones.

_Stupid **very** sexy Fai._

He'd always liked Fai's face best when he had a serious look instead of that stupid grin, anyway.

"Hello, I'm Fai and I'm a wanker," Kurogane said to the mirror, trying to imitate Fai's voice. It didn't come out sounding quite right - too deep, too rough. He pitched his voice higher, smoother, and tried again.

"Hi, I'm Fai Fluorite and I have _raging_ commitment issues. Try to pin me down to so much as a breakfast date and I'll find some way to _ssslither_ out of it." The word _slither_ came out almost lovingly, his tongue wrapping caressingly around the _l_ and _r_ sounds. "Would you like to see just how well I can slither?"

The words sent a warm thrill down his chest, and Kurogane was struck by a wicked thought. He backed up a few paces, until he could see the entirety of Fai's top half in the washstand mirror instead of just his face, and began taking off Fai's shirt.

Kurogane took it slow, tilting slightly from side to side to watch the way the light and shadows slipped over Fai's shoulder, then his collarbone, then the hollows between his ribs as the fabric was slipped slowly down off his pectorals. He dragged the edge of his thumb across the pinkish skin of Fai's nipple, and caught his breath at the jolt of sensation that bolted through his chest. His own nipples had never been particularly sensitive, but he thought he could see now why Fai always liked having his played with.

If you'd asked Kurogane earlier today whether he could find any silver linings in this whole body-hopping fiasco, he would have called you insane. But this - this was fucking _awesome._ He got to watch Fai's sexy, sexy body _and_ he got to feel the effects from it, at the same time. And best of all, Fai couldn't even say something stupid to ruin the moment.

"I'm a grown-ass man and I still think talking in baby talk in bed is funny," Kurogane muttered, then shook his head sharply and pushed his voice back into the Fai-register. Fai would never say something like 'grown-ass.' "Also, I just _looooove_ rubber duckies in the bath, and I play with my food. Ooo, can't you just _feel_ the maturity in the room?"

He rolled his shoulders and held his arms behind him, letting the shirt drop to the floor in a puddle. Staring thoughtfully at the bare chest and torso reflected in the mirror before him, Kurogane ran his hands over the stomach, tracing long delicate fingers over the defined muscles over the flanks and then skipping lightly over the hips. Catching his lip charmingly between his front teeth, Kurogane dove his hand down the front of Fai's pants and threaded his fingers through the soft curly hair there. A warm, tingling thrill followed the path of his palm, washing out across his groin and making his cock twitch, and Kurogane gasped softly.

Untying the laces of Fai's breeches with his left hand took more time than he would have liked; it's not that he wasn't familiar with getting into Fai's pants, but usually from the other direction. Once the waistband was loosened, giving him some room to work, he adjusted the warm shaft to bob freely in the air above the waistband and curled his hand about it, sending a frission of shock up his spine. Blue eyes gleamed at him from the reflection of the mirror, and a wicked smile curved across that face as Kurogane began to move his hand slowly up and down Fai's cock.

"My name is Fai, and I'm a _super_ good magician, never mind that I never actually do any magic," Kurogane addressed the mirror, a trifle breathlessly. "My magic lives in another country, you wouldn't have met it."

The pants were getting annoying, even with the waistband open, so Kurogane paused a moment to wriggle them down off his hips. He slid his hands over the long, long legs as he went, barely feeling the soft prickle of Fai's leg hair against his palms, the hair invisible against his skin in this lighting. It was like a striptease, except even better because he couldn't have his hands smacked and be told not to touch. These were _his_ hands and he could touch whatever he damn well pleased.

Now naked, Kurogane returned his attention to the mirror and to touching his throbbing cock. Much to Kurogane's annoyance, the size and positioning of the mirror meant that he could only see Fai's reflection from the waist up - if he stood on his tiptoes he could get a glimpse of fine pale hair and a flushed, dark red tip, but nothing more. But it also wasn't tall enough to capture Fai's full height if he put it on the floor, either.

After a moment's thought, Kurogane regretfully left off stroking his cock and reached over the washbasin, pulling the mirror off the hook with a quick yank. He stepped back and set the mirror on the floor, tilted it back and up for a few moments to get the angle just right, then walked over and sat on the bed. Now he could see Fai's body from head to toe, and when he leaned back on the mattress and spread his legs, he had a perfect view.

"My name is Fai and I like to cook, too bad the only thing I know how to make is desserts and other sweet crap," he told the reflection in the mirror. He reached down with soft hands and touched and rolled them between his fingers, loving the surge of heat that spread up his stomach when he pressed them. "Would you like to try my _strawberry popsicle?"_

Mockery aside, Fai's cock actually did look damn delicious right now, and Kurogane was only sorry he couldn't get down between those spread legs and start sucking on it. Almost as good as getting Fai to return the favor, always a double win in that it felt fantastic _and_ got Fai to shut up. But that was just out of the question for tonight, so Kurogane settled for fisting his hand around his cock and pumping up and down. A moan started deep in his ribcage and vibrated up through his collar and throat, no matter how he tried to bite it back.

"Ooh, Kurogane, you have such _strong_ hands," Kurogane panted. Even when imitating Fai, he absolutely refused to give in to his stupid nicknaming habit. "I want those hands all over me, and inside of me too. I want to ride you without a saddle, you studly stallion of Suwa you."

He spared one hand from his cock to run up and down Fai's torso, tweaking his nipples again and forcing another startled moan out of his throat. Damn, he was going to have to remember that for later.

His breath came in pants now, too hard and fast for him to make mirror-Fai deliver any more lines, even though he had a few more he kind of wanted to hear in Fai's voice about how big and stiff his sword was. Another time, maybe - he'd have this room to himself until they left this world and got back in their proper bodies.

For the first time since they'd arrived in this world, Kurogane kind of thought maybe he could wait a little longer for that to happen.

He felt his legs quiver and his balls tighten and draw up as orgasm approached, and he arched off the bed, hand moving faster as his breath harshened in his throat. Fai's reflection looked absolutely _delicious,_ every inch tense and quivering, one hand holding him up against the bed as his hips thrust up into his hand. "Oh, yes, Kurogane, yes," Kurogane moaned in his best Fai-voice. "More, please, _mooooooaaaarrgh!"_

Kurogane came into his hand with a strangled groan, hips jerking and stuttering in a failing rhythm as hot cum spilled out over his hand. Once it was over, he slumped back against the bed, still watching his reflection with hooded sapphire-blue eyes. Thoughtfully he raised his jizz-covered hand and inspected it, wondering if Fai's come tasted any different to Fai's tongue than it did to his own.

He had one hand up to his mouth when a sudden _thump_ against the wall by the head of the bed made him jump, and bite down nearly hard enough to draw blood. "I don't sound like that, asshole!" Sakura's voice shouted through the wall adjoining to the next room.

Apparently the rooms weren't _quite_ as private and soundproof as the innkeeper had promised them.

Kurogane slammed his hand back against the wall, harder. "Go the fuck to sleep!" he bellowed, covering mortified embarrassment with anger.

"Good _night,_ studly stallion of Suwa!" Syaoran's voice sang from the room on the other side of him. Kurogane sank down between the blankets and pulled the pillow over his face, wondering if it would be so kind as to crawl down his throat and strangle him while he slept.

* * *

Thankfully, Syaoran woke up the next morning in Mokona's body with no worse side-effects from the day's magical misadventures than a lingering grogginess and occasional bouts of confusion. Mokona herself did not help that last, as she continually tried to give Syaoran advice on using the 'secret techniques' that proved no help whatsoever.

After a quick breakfast, the five travelers ventured out of the inn to search through the town, talking to the townspeople and gathering clues as to the location of the feather. It was a task they had undertaken many, many times before, and despite the altered perspectives it was familiar to all of them.

Of course, that didn't mean there weren't still some complications.

"Princess, stop walking like that," Kurogane muttered, pitching his voice to reach Sakura's ears.

She looked around at him in confusion, her stride faltering. "Like what?" she asked, tiptoeing back towards the group.

"Like that!" Kurogane said in exasperation. "You're... _mincing._ Ninjas do not mince. Ninjas _stride_. No one's gonna take you seriously if you walk like that. "

"Oh - sorry," Sakura said, an embarrased blush darkening her cheeks. She took a long, clumsy step, obviously attempting a stride.

"And stop blushing at every little thing!" Kurogane snapped. "You're supposed to be a ferocious warrior not. Nothing fazes you, and sure as hell nothing embarrasses you. No blushing."

"Sorry," Sakura said again, ducking her head.

"And stop _apologizing!_ Ninja's do not apol- what's that on your head?" Kurogane suddenly demanded, turning to face Sakura full-on.

"Oh, what's what on my head?" Sakura asked with patently false innocence, trying to turn her head to the side to evade Kurogane's gaze. "Is there something on my head?"

" _That._ On the side of your face. In your hair. In _my hair,_ " Kurogane said, jabbing a finger at the offending item. "What is _that thing?"_

"It's... a ribbon," Sakura said reluctantly.

"I can SEE that it's a ribbon, I'm not BLIND!" Kurogane roared.

"Then why did you have to ask what it was?" Fai interjected with artful innocence.

"I meant what is it doing in MY HAIR?" Kurogane roared. "I can't walk around with a damn piece of frilly pink satin on my head! Nobody is going to take me seriously! Take the damn thing out and BURN IT!"

Sakura burst into tears. "You're so cruel, Kurogane-san!" she sobbed, drawing weird looks from all nearby passersby. "You don't know how hard it is, being in such a strange body! All I wanted was to feel like myself again!"

"Leave Princess Sakura alone!" Syaoran cried, leaping out of Mokona's arms to interpose himself between Kurogane and Sakura. "How dare you make Sakura cry?"

Unfortunately, a lingering side effect of Syaoran's current condition was that in moments of distress, he tended to accidentally trigger Mokona's special magics. As Syaoran opened his mouth wide to voice further protest, it happened again.

The travelers stumbled and staggered for balance in the sudden gust of air that rushed out of Syaoran's mouth and buffeted them from all directions. It didn't just stop with them, either; cyclonic winds swirled outward and upward from the central point, assailing passersby with its tempestuous tantrum. One townswoman shrieked and clutched at her skirt as the sudden updraft exposed her (surprisingly excitingly knitted) underwear.

"Oh, I'm so _sorry!"_ Sakura apologized to the woman profusely, and Kurogane growled like a boiling teakettle.

Fai sighed and rubbed at his forehead. Clearly, if they were going to get anything done today, they were going to have to split the party. Sakura and Kurogane needed to be separated before Kurogane exploded. Mokona and Syaoran needed to stay together, in the forlorn hopes that the magical creature would be able to help Syaoran control his wildly fluctuating powers. And seeing Sakura in such distress was only going to set Syaoran off more. That really only left one option.

* * *

The atmosphere of the place was rough and rowdy, the lights dim on filthy floors and smoke-stained walls. Disreputable figures lurked at beer-stained tables, nursing their drinks and eyeing each other with sullen scowls, and if not for the annoying tendency of the bar's patrons to randomly break out into spontaneously choreographed song and dance, it would have been just like any other bar Kurogane had ever been to.

But no matter how weird, it was a place where men come to drink and, once drunk, to talk. There was no place quite so good for gathering local gossip as in a hot, fetid, overcrowded building full of drunks and brawlers.

Fai's smaller, skinnier body didn't loom quite so well as his own, so it was a little harder to clear space at the bar by his mere threatening presence; but a couple of well-applied sharp elbows and steel-capped toes managed to clear some space for himself and his companions. "I'll take three of whatever you've got," he called to the bartender, pushing across some local coin."

The bartender fetched a few mugs, although he sent a doubtful look at Mokona. "You sure you want a kid that young to be drinking?" he asked. "And your dog? Beer's not good for dogs."

"He's not a dog," Kurogane said with a snort, "and who said any of those three were for them? They're just for me to start on. The kids can have whatever they want too, I guess."

Since there was obviously no point in appealing to Kurogane's sense of responsibility, the barkeep poured the drinks and went off again with the money. Kurogane settled in to listen, somewhat annoyed that the legs of this body weren't quite long enough to reach the ground from the high bar stool.

Mokona had gone quiet again, arms held out stiff to the side, resembling either an unusually lifelike store mannequin or an extremely fresh and peppy zombie. Kurogane nudged her with an elbow. "Oi," he said. "You're human right now, remember? You don't have to pretend to be a doll. In fact, it's really really weird when you do."

Mokona jumped, eyes opening wide. "That's right!" she gasped. "Mokona is in a human body! Mokona wants to try to do _human body_ things!"

Beside him, Kurogane heard Syaoran whimper. "Remember, we're here to get information, not fool around," he warned Mokona.

"Mokona will make some friends! Friends love to talk to each other!"

Kurogane glanced over the assemblage of drunken patrons with some doubt. "I dunno that you're going to have much luck with that," he said.

Mokona gave an exaggerated huff of offense. "You say that like Mokona doesn't know _how_ to make friends," she complained. "Step one: be friendly and positive! People respond to a smile! Step two: Identify things that you have in common with your new friends and share in activities related to those interests! Every friendship is based on common grounds! Step three: Smile!"

"If you say so," Kurogane said, who'd never made any active effort to make friends in his life. "Knock yourself out."

"Yay!" Mokona cheered, and bounded away from the bar towards the rest of the taproom. She seemed to have forgotten once again that she was a normal human size, as she still preferred jumping from chair to tabletop to chair rather than actually walking on the floor. Another bound planted her firmly in the middle of a group of hairy men deeply involved in drinking and what looked like a dice game.

"Hiya!" Mokona greeted them all with a dazzling smile. "Did you know, I have hair on my underarms, my legs, and on the soft wiggly things on my crotch, too. It looks like _you_ guys have lots of hair on your bodies, too! Can I see?"

The bar went abruptly silent, so that Kurogane could only hear the sound of Syaoran's horrified moan.

"Oh! And, and! This morning when I woke up, the squishy dangly bits were _not_ squishy and dangly, but instead stiff and inconvenient! Does this ever happen to you, too? How do you deal with it?"

For a long moment, nobody spoke. Finally one man stood up from the bar: scarred, heavily tattooed, and with an eyepatch over the ruin of one eye, he loomed above Mokona like a wall.

"Son," he said, clapping one meaty hand on Mokona's shoulder. "It's past time you learnt something, though it oughtn't be on me to tell you this. There comes a time in your life when a boy must become a man..."

Kurogane relaxed, once it became apparent that Syaoran would not have to return to a body smashed into meat paste. And quickly shuddered away from that end of the bar, so that he didn't have to deal with the spectacle of the ugly old thug giving a boys-and-the-bees talk.

He collected a new mug from the barkeep, and retired to the corner of a nearby table where he could listen in on the conversation of a couple old geezers nearby. Geezers, in Kurogane's experience, were second to none for a source of gossip.

"I hear them at night, I'm telling you!" one older man, nose bulbous and prominent with veins, told his drinking companions in a vehement, hushed whisper. "Hear them in the hills to the south, howling and milling around. They're just waiting a chance, I tell you, a chance to come down and ambush all in our beds. We sit here, like sitting ducks, while they come closer... and closer... until one dark night they'll come down to suck our blood and devour us whole!"

"Excuse me, granddad," Kurogane broke in, joining the conversation. "What terrible beast are you referring to? Werewolves? Demons? Demon werewolves with laughably erroneous misinterpretations of how actual wolf pack social dynamics work? Perhaps a _dragon?"_

The old man and his drinking companions looked at Kurogane with surprise and faint condescension. "Eh, what are you, stupid?" the old man asked. "Everyone knows the dragon in the mountains to the _north._ I'm talking about _tax collectors."_

Kurogane frowned. "But there _is_ a dragon to the north?" he said sharply.

"That's what I just said, isn't it? Everybody knows it's up there, sitting on a whole heap of gold and magical treasure, shining radiantly in the dark." He sighed deeply.

"Well, if _everybody knows_ it's there, shouldn't someone do something about it?" Kurogane demanded.

The old man shrugged. "Well, sure, but have you ever tried to make a dragon fill out tax paperwork?"

"I meant _doing something about it_ as in _killing it,_ " Kurogane growled.

"Oh... er... well of course," the old man said, stammering a bit and darting his gaze between several of his friends for support. "Of course, we could defeat that dragon in a heartbeat if we _wanted_ to, couldn't we lads?"

" _I_ could defeat that dragon," one of the local burlies sneered. "I don't even need a sword. I could choke it to death with my bare hands!"

"You think you'd even need your hands?" another challenged him. " _I_ could kill the dragon with my hands tied behind my back! And with a blindfold over my eyes, I would kick it to death using only my ears to guide me!"

"Child's play!" a third scoffed. "I could defeat that dragon with _both my arms and legs cut off,_ _and_ with my eyes cut out, by _biting_ the beast to death!"

"You're all pathetic!" the chief bully roared, raising his voice above the general hubbub. "Stand back and watch while _I_ kill the dragon with both my arms _and_ legs burnt off in a fire _and_ all my teeth punched out, by beating it to death with the half-charred remains of my penis!"

The atmosphere was getting more and more rowdy as the debate heated up; Mokona dancing on tabletops in the background was not helping the general ambiance. Kurogane slid back carefully from the table, bringing Syaoran with him. "So, it looks like it's going to be up to us to kill that dragon," he muttered to Syaoran.

Syaoran looked up at him, ears twitching. "You think it has Sakura's feather?" he said.

Kurogane nodded. "Makes sense, doesn't it?" he asked. "The feathers are powerful, and dragons are attracted to shiny and valuable things. Besides, that old man said that the dragon's treasure 'glowed radiantly in the dark.' What does that sound like to you?"

"Sakura's feather!" Syaoran exclaimed with excitement. "But, how are we going to beat that dragon? I would help if I could, but I'm no use like this!"

Kurogane grimaced. "I feel you, kid," he said. He thought about it for a moment. "Well, the only thing I can see to do is that the princess will have to do it."

 _"What?"_ Syaoran cried out.

As he took a deep breath to voice his objections, it was as though a powerful engine had switched on, and air rushed past Kurogane into Syaoran's gaping maw. The force of the gale rattled the bar stools on their legs, and peanuts and small dishes were whipped away into the nothingness, along with a furry black toupee ripped from the head of one of the drunken bar residents.

"What the fuck?" the drunk screamed, his hands swiping clumsily at his head. He whirled around, bloodshot eyes glaring with the promise of murder.

"Ah! That's Secret Technique #96!" Mokona observed brightly from the background. "Medium Power Vacuum! That one's _always_ a crowd pleaser."

Kurogane had a moment of real alarm as dishes, bar rags, the offending toupee, and the liquid remains of unconsumed drinks all flew past him into the vortex of Syaoran's mouth. Even the bar stool he was on rattled ominously as gravity fought the suction of vacuum. But then all at once there was a _flup_ noise, like a clogged hose, as the dangerous suction ceased. Syaoran toppled over, limp and groaning faintly as the incautious overuse of power left him unconscious once more.

"My hair!" the drunk screeched, knuckles cracking as he flexed his hands. "Your rat-thing ate my hair!"

One of the other bar patrons, too far gone to have any respect for the hazards, hooted with laughter. "Maybe he thought it was another rat!" he called out.

The recently de-haired man whirled around with a howl and punched the would-be jester squarely in the face. One of his friends jumped to his defense with a shout, and within minutes the scene had devolved into a messy brawl.

"We've got what we came here," Kurogane muttered to Mokona, tucking the insensate Syaoran into a pocket. "Let's get out of here."

Before he could go anywhere, one of the singing drinkers from earlier stumbled and weaved across his path, waving his arms as he bawled out the chorus. Kurogane grabbed him by the back of the neck and ran him headfirst smack into the wall, leaving him to slide slowly down the wall to fold up on the floor. "And nobody wants to hear about your fucking dreams!"

Kurogane just hoped that wherever he was, Fai was having as much of a headache as he was.

* * *

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Sakura queried doubtfully, as the spa attendants fussed around them, lowering their hands and feets into sweetly-scented baths and conscientiously massaging their shoulders.

"Well, why not?" Fai said with a smile. He tipped his head back against the padded seat rest as the matronly-looking beautician arranged fresh cool cucumber slices across his face. Sakura, meanwhile, had one hand in the grip of the manicurist who was buffing her nails to a shine while another attendant painted tea-green paste on her face. She looked simultaneously pleased and intimidated by the attention, but there was still a note of doubt in her voice.

"Well... I mean... we're supposed to be looking for the... you know," Sakura said, pitching her voice to a whisper as though that could disguise it from the half-dozen people in immediate hearing range. "And besides... it just doesn't feel right... lazing around getting pampered while the town is in danger!"

"On the contrary, my dear, this is the best help we can offer this town right now," Fai replied with a smile. "We are stimulating the local economy, by buying goods and services that would otherwise go to waste. You wouldn't want these lovely ladies to be out of a job, would you?"

Sakura's eyes widened and she shook her head, much to the irritation of the facemask-applying attendant. "I'm almost done here, sir, if you would just be still another moment!" she chided.

Another of the beauticians leaned down and whispered in Sakura's ear, "You've really been amazingly patient, sir. It's so nice to see a father really getting involved with his daughter, and going out to do things together! Your little girl is so lucky to have you!"

Sakura blushed in response to the compliment, and sank down in the padded chair as she muttered thanks. Fai grinned. He had seen Sakura's wistful gaze drawn to this spa when they passed it on the road, and considered it a more than worthy splurge. He knew that Sakura was feeling oppressed and unbalanced by the strange new body she'd been thrown into, and needed a chance to feel like a girl again.

And if that meant that Kurogane was going to get back a body with perfectly groomed and tended nails, cucumber-melon scented lotion on his skin, and sparkly paint on his toes, well, that was just a price Fai was willing for Kurogane to pay.

"Besides," he said, picking up his thread of conversation from before, "Even on a journey like this one, sometimes you just have to relax and take some time to take care of yourself. It's the only way to stay strong."

"That is exactly right, missy!" the head beautician said emphatically. "Why, the hardest times are exactly the times you most _need_ to stop and relax, and breathe in the world around you. Troubled times like these are exactly when our town needs us the most!"

"Troubled times?" Sakura asked, perking up a bit at the bit of gossip. "Why, what's going on in this town right now?"

"Oh, it's so terrible," the cucumber-wielding lady tsked, her hands rubbing and squeezing at the sparse muscle in Sakura's tiny frame. "All those young people. So full of life, so full of promise."

"Truly a tragedy," the tea-painting woman agreed. "They all seemed so healthy. But once the sleeping sickness gets into them, within a week - bang! Out like a light, they are."

"Haven't any of them woken up yet?" a third spa lady asked, apparently not quite as in the loop as the others. They stopped to give their colleague looks of pitying scorn. "What? I'm just trying to look on the bright side!"

Tea-painting lady let out a tragic sigh. "No, not even the Tsukishiro boy has shown any signs of waking, and he was the first one to go down," she said. "Of course, he was always weak and sickly, the dear boy. We should have known that something like this would strike him down one day, but who would have thought he would pass his strange malady on to others after he succumbed?"

"It's so strange," the cucumber lady said, idly arranging slices of citrus above Fai's ears, "how only one person is ever sick at a time - and another never sickens until the first one falls into a coma. It's almost like a _curse!"_

That produced a titillated buzz among the spa ladies. "Oh, nonsense, don't say such wicked things!" the tea-painting lady said in a tone of blatant encouragement to say more such wicked things.

Sakura and Fai met each other's glances (with some difficulty on Fai's part, who had to shift very carefully not to dislodge the array of fruits and vegetables now piled on his face.) Could it be a coincidence that such a strange, unnatural illness should show up at the same time and place as Sakura's feather?

Coincidence or not, they would have to wait until they met back up with the other travelers before they could decide to do anything. In the meantime, Fai settled back in his padded spa chair, and dipped his toes into the special tub of fish guaranteed to nibble away all their calluses.

* * *

Syaoran woke up back in his bedroom at the inn, feeling something unfairly like a hangover, but in his stomach. Groaning, he got to his tiny stubby paws and shuffled out of the room and down the stairs to the common room where his friends were gathered.

What he saw there - or rather, _didn't_ see - made him stop in his tracks. Kurogane, Fai and Mokona were sitting around a card table, but there was no fourth figure to be seen. "Where's Sakura?" he cried out.

Fai and Kurogane looked up. "Hmmm?" Fai asked in mild surprise. "Oh, she's gone after the dragon."

"WHAT?!" Syaoran shrieked.

Kurogane nodded. "It's the only logical choice, really," he said knowingly. "She's the only one of us right now in a body that's suited for fighting."

Syaoran couldn't believe what his fuzzy white ears were telling him. "B-but she'll be killed!" he exclaimed. "Killed and - and then _eaten!"_

"Mokona certainly hopes so!" Mokona piped up. "The other way around would be much, much worse!"

Fai tsked disapprovingly at Mokona, then turned a beneficent smile on Syaoran. "I'm sure she'll be just fine," he said soothingly.

"How can she be FINE? She's fighting a DRAGON!" Syaoran shrieked. "Princess Sakura doesn't even know HOW to fight!"

"But the body she's in _does,_ " Kurogane argued. "It's all about the muscle memory. I told her, just draw the sword, and your reflexes'll dice that dragon before you can say quack!"

Syaoran's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?" he exclaimed. "We have to save her!"

"Now, Syaoran," Fai began chidingly. "Sakura-chan is a growing an independent young woman in a ninja's unfamiliar body. If you rush in to help her too quickly, she'll never be able to do things on her own, either."

"Take it from me, kid," Kurogane confided. "Interrupting a girl's first dragon slaying is a _major_ faux pas. You don't want the princess to think you don't trust her, do you?"

"I can't believe you people," Syaoran cried. "If none of you are going to help her, I WILL!"

Recalling Mokona's _unbelievably unhelpful_ advice, Syaoran managed to call on one of the pools of untapped space deep within his magical construct body until he located the one that held Souhi and Hien, then coughed it out. The edge of the hilt caught on the magical interdimensional portal halfway, reducing Syaoran to a fit of heaving coughs and gags that made his eyes water. He shuddered at the feeling of the large, heavy object inching slowly out of his mouth. This had to be the worst thing he'd ever felt; it was like giving birth, only _backwards._

But he had a purpose to fulfill, and so he hung grimly on until the full length of the sword clattered to the pavement beside him. He picked it up in his tiny paws, staggering across the cobblestones as the counterweight of the long blade overbalanced him. At last he managed to steady his grip on the sword, resting the center of its balance on the fulcrum of his tiny white shoulder, and turned the hilt to face down the road.

"Sakura-hime! I'm coming!" he cried, and began to hop down the road on his tiny, tiny legs.

Kurogane and Fai watched him go. "Shouldn't we go after him, d'you think?" Kurogane said eventually.

"At the pace he's going?" Fai looked at him in surprise. "I should think we'd at least have time for lunch."

"You're probably right."

"And a nice long dessert after," Fai added.

Mokona cheered. "Yay! Cake!"

The sun had dipped several hours towards the horizon before Kurogane, Fai and Mokona, strolling at a leisurely pace, overtook Syaoran's toiling form on the road leading up the foothills. Ahead of them loomed a dark, foreboding mountain, and road dead-ended in the gaping maw of a dark cave before them, the inside of the cavern walls glowing with a faint orange light.

"About time you got here," Syaoran cried, still dragging the heavy sword along with both paws. "Sakura's been in there for hours! I'm sure she's been killed!"

"No, no, you got it all wrong," Kurogane assured him with enthusiasm. "The moment she faced that dragon with her sword in hand, my battle-hardened reflexes would take over and she would decapitate it in with one swing of her mighty thews!"

"You're raving," Syaoran groaned. "If anyone is decapitated in there it is definitely Sakura!"

Kurogane snorted in profound disagreement. "Dragon."

"Sakura!"

"Dragon!"

_"Sakura!"_

"Boys, boys," Fai soothed, interceding between them as he always did. "There's no need to fight over this."

Kurogane and Syaoran glowered at each over around Fai's legs. Fai added, "It's perfectly possible that they're _both_ dead. Now, shall we go inside and have a look?"

The four travelers ventured into the cave, which turned out to be the entrance to a tunnel that sloped downwards into the mountain. The light grew as they descended, until they finally reached a blank wall at the bottom of the slope. The corridor made a sharp right further into the heart of the mountain, and the yellow light was coming from the room beyond. A deep, sonorous voice was speaking, and the echoes the voice made as it rolled and reverberated against the stone walls made it hard to pick out the words at first.

"...harmless enough at first," the voice was saying. "Mostly they just raised sheep and left me alone. But then there started being more and more of them, and the little cluster of houses down at the crossroads multiplied into a whole village. Then a town. Next thing I know there are representatives from the town council in my living room, telling me I'm fifteen years behind on paying my property taxes. _Property taxes!_ Paid on the mountain I've been living in for centuries before their first misbegotten sheep wandered into this valley!"

"That does seem kind of unreasonable of them," Kurogane's deep voice came from the chamber beyond, sounding sympathetic. "I mean, you _were_ here first."

"It's extortion," the large voice said passionately as the travelers rounded the last corner and stopped in their tracks, taking in the scene before them. "I ask no services of them, so what right have they to ask money of me? It's tyranny, that's what it is. If a dragon's personal property can be taken without hir consent by a so-called government, then all other rights are taken with it..."

Most of the cave beyond was filled up by a large, scaly body; looping and sinuous like a snake's, but with thick muscular legs emerging from the body near the head and halfway to the tail. A pair of large webbed wings were currently folded neatly against the dragon's body like a cape, and he (or she - it was impossible to tell the sex of a dragon without some very up-close-and-personal work that very few dedicated specialists had ever returned from alive) was holding a fine china tea cup in one delicately pincered claw.

Seated across the table from the dragon, and also holding a cup of tea, was Kurogane, or rather Sakura in Kurogane's body. She sat with her legs tucked up under her, sipping the tea and listening with great sympathy to the dragon's rant about tyranny, personal property, and thieving rogues disguising themselves with a thin cloak of legitimacy of self-declared authority.

Kurogane was the first to speak, sputtering in outrage. "What are you doing?" he near-shrieked at Sakura, who swiveled her head around to blink at him. "I told you to _slay_ the dragon, not have tea with it!"

The dragon rotated its head around to glare disapprovingly down at the top of Kurogane's head. "Armed enforcers are the last gasp of a fascist government," it said, "enforcing with clubs and knives upon citizens they cannot intimidate those acts they cannot rationalize. Fuck the police."

"Oh, Ariel, it's all right," Sakura exclaimed, hurrying to introduce the newcomers to the lair's resident. "This is my friend, Kurogane. He's not a policeman."

"Damn right I'm not," Kurogane huffed. As though he would ever take such a common and low-life profession.

"He's just an assassin!" Sakura continued brightly. Syaoran groaned, burying his head in his tiny paws.

"Now, Kurogane, did you _really_ expect your plan to work?" Fai said to the ninja, momentarily ignoring the dragon looming over them. "I was pretty sure something like this would happen. I mean, you had to know that any plan of action that required Sakura to so much as harm a fly would never happen."

"Then why didn't you _say_ anything?" Kurogane raged.

Fai smiled at him, and a cold gleam flashed through Sakura's green eyes for a moment before vanishing. "Because, _Kuro-sama,_ I've learned over our time traveling together that it's much easier to just wait for your plans to fail, than to waste time and breath arguing over them."

"But, what about the feather?" Syaoran exclaimed, hopping forward and craning his nonexistent neck to look around the cave.

The dragon snorted. "Feathers? What do I look like, a dinosaur?" it rumbled.

"No, no, I mean _Sakura's_ feathers," Syaoran hurried to explain.

"What, you mean this human? _He's_ not a dinosaur either."

"No - I mean -" Syaoran floundered. "We heard from some of the townspeople that you had a, uh, a wondrous hoard of treasure?"

From behind the dragon's shoulder, Sakura's face grew wide and alarmed, and she made an urgent negating gesture in Syaoran's direction. The dragon wasn't looking at her, though.

"Oh, you've heard about my collection?" the dragon boomed enthusiastically, wings fluttering with excitement as it rose from the tea-table. "Let me show you! I'm very proud!"

Sakura covered her face with her hands, hiding a faint moan. Apparently, she'd been through this routine once before. The dragon paid no heed, however, rising from the table and coiling its scaly body around as it began dragging out long shelves coated with twisted-looking metal contraptions.

"I have the most comprehensive collection of vintage kitchen appliances in twelve countries," the dragon boasted, picking one off the shelves at random and thrusting it in the travelers' directions. "There's this one, of course; a vintage early-model electronic hand mixer from the 1950s. Sixty years old and it still runs like new - none of this 'planned obsolescence' crap that you get these days.

"Let's see, ooh, I'm very proud of this one - a Great War-era dual-coil cantilever-action toaster oven! First model on the market ever to toast bread on both sides at once! Marked a new paradigm for toaster technology, a must-have for any serious kitchen appliance collector.

"Ah yes, this is one of my favorites - the Tyson Twenty-Nine, so named both for the year it was released _and_ for the number of simultaneous functions it could perform, a record for any hand-held appliance _ever_. It slices, dices, carves, chops, shops, shanks, shaves, shuffles, sections, sculptures, sutures, snips, stabs, seasons, dilutes, permutes, boils, bakes, roasts, percolates, perpetuates, excavates, evacuates, exacerbates, nettles, piques, provokes, offends, _and_ zests," the dragon rattled off in a single breath. "Of course, it couldn't do any of them _well,_ but still worth having just for the lesson it presents on letting your marketing team write the engineering specs -"

"Excuse me... Sir," With some difficulty Syaoran broke into the running flow of sales pitch. "Er... I remember hearing that some of your amazing treasures... glow radiantly in the darkness with their own inner light?"

The dragon scratched its head with one delicate claw, looking perplexed. "Well, some of them _do_ have light-up diodes," he admitted, "but I would hardly call them _radiant,_ that sort of power-sucking ostentatiousness usually shows up on later models that I would hardly consider fit to add to my collection..."

"What about the, uh, the science oven?" Sakura broke in. "I, er, remember that _that_ one had its own light?"

"Oh yes! Of course, the science oven!" the dragon said, delighted by the reminder. A rapid shuffling among the heavily-laden shelves produced a stubby, square box of dull gray metal. "One of the very first _ever_ made, it came with a built-in light to warn the user when the device was in operation. Of course that's not its _primary purpose,_ haha, but it _is_ a good way for the user to avoid accidentally being bombarded with microwave radiation, which as everyone knows can cause sterility, and also voting straight-party."

"Perhaps you could demonstrate its operation?" Fai stepped in smoothly.

"Well, it's hardly complex to operate, but I suppose if you really want to see it..." The dragon frowned toothily down at the box, then used its needle-sharp claws to delicately push a button on the front panel. The box lit up and hummed, a bright light shining from the front glass panel as a tiny plate inside rotated. The dragon paused, head hanging arrested in the air as it stared at the light coming from the box. "So shiny..." he murmured.

"Quick," Sakura whispered to the other travelers. "Let's get out of here while he's distracted! I don't want to spend another three hours listening to him talk about the tyranny of public libraries as a vehicle for the government to keep the population brainwashed and compliant!"

They turned and hurried back up the corridor, while behind them the dragon pushed the button on the box over and over again, slit-pupils dilated wide as they drank in the golden light from the humming machine. "So... bright..." he mumbled dazedly. "So... _shiny."_

"Well, _that_ was a massive waste of our time," Kurogane said as they descended the mountain path in the sinking sunlight.

Sakura disagreed. "We made a new friend," she said (being overgenerous with her definition of 'we' as usual) (and also her definition of 'friend.) "And that's always time well spent!"

"But we're no closer to finding your feather," Syaoran moaned from the cradle of Sakura's arms. Being carried by her did serve to reassure him that she had taken no harm from the dragon, so he had calmed down considerably. "And that was our only lead!"

"Not our _only_ lead, Syaoran-kun," Fai disagreed. "While you and Kuro-drunk were smashing around in pubs starting fights, Sakura and I were gathering information in our own way."

"We went to a spa!" Sakura blurted, and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

Kurogane scoffed. "Why would you expect to hear any good local gossip in a _spa?_ " he said. His expression turned deeply suspicious. "Wait, what do you mean by ' _we'_ went to a spa?"

"And while we were there, we heard one of the local women talking about a string of mysterious illnesses that have gripped the town," Fai said loudly, overriding Kurogane's next questions. "It's very strange - apparently it only affects one person at a time, and as they drop into a coma, another one starts falling sick. That doesn't sound like a _normal_ disease to me, does it?"

The travelers mulled it over. "Not really," Syaoran said at last, "but I don't see how it could be caused by the feather, either."

"Strong magic like the feather can cause all _kinds_ of secondary effects," Mokona contributed helpfully, from where she was doing cartwheels by the side of the road.

"At any rate, it _is_ a lead, and we should check it out," Fai said firmly.

Kurogane shrugged. "What the hell, why not," he said. "I'll try anything, as long as it gets me back into my proper body faster."

Fai couldn't help but agree, although he wasn't going to make Sakura cry by saying so out loud. This unexpected body-switching adventure hadn't been easy on any of them, and while he made a point of being easy and adaptable, the strain was beginning to wear on him.

What bothered him wasn't how much smaller and weaker this body was to his own, as so annoyed Kurogane. Nor how differently everyone reacted to him now, like Sakura. Nor being trapped in a miniaturized magical golem not even of remotely similar species or anatomy, with a sudden array of inexplicable powers he couldn't control, like Syaoran.

Well, okay, maybe this adventure had been a _little_ harder on some of them than others.

Instead it was the increasing nagging feeling that he was doing Sakura a disservice by inhabiting her body like this. No matter what body he was in, Sakura was his little girl, and while he wasn't going to endanger her health or comfort by neglecting to properly maintain her body while she wasn't in it, he felt _intensely_ uncomfortable doing so.

Normal bathroom and bathing tasks hadn't been too bad. To be quite frank, from a top-down view there was not really all that much of a difference from his _own_ body (not that he ever intended to tell Sakura _that,_ either.) As long as he didn't go looking, he wasn't in danger of seeing anything he shouldn't.

But then Kurogane had put on his little audio show from the bedroom next door and, well, _that_ just stirred up all kinds of feelings that were _intensely wrong_ for Fai to be having while in Sakura's body. Feelings that were warm and tingly in all the places he'd been trying not to think too hard about. And ever since then, every time Kurogane talked, in that special growly intonation of his (unmistakable, even in Fai's own voice,) they threatened to make a return.

This wasn't good at all. He had to think about something else. Fai cast his attention around for a distraction, and found one in Mokona, who was currently spinning around like a ballerina and squealing in happiness as she staggered around dizzily after...

Warm and tingly feelings again.

 _Damn._ Syaoran was obviously out as a topic of distraction. Fai forced his attention to the surrounding scenery, instead. It was a lovely, sunny spring day. Sun shining through the trees, birds singing, bunnies fucking in the meadows; bright flowers, butterflies. All the things that innocent little girls like Sakura adored. Flowers, rainbows, butterflies, unicorns; especially pearly white unicorns with the big, strong horns, twisted in a spiral as they rose gracefully from the unicorn's forehead, so proud and hard...

Warm and tingly. _Goddammit._

He kept forgetting that Sakura, for all her innocence, was _still very much a teenager._ Somebody desperately needed to teach the princess how to masturbate. Someone who was _definitely not Fai._

Thankfully, they were almost back to the village by now, passing by the first outlying buildings. "But, even if the strange illness _is_ connected to the feather somehow," Syaoran was saying in a frustrated tone of voice. "There are hundreds - even thousands - of people living in this town! How are we supposed to find the _one_ person suffering from this mysterious disease - before it passes on?"

All at once, the door to the house they were passing banged open and a woman ran out, screaming and waving her hands. "Help! Someone help!" she cried, wringing her hands and tears streaking her face. "My son is sick! He's suffering from the horrible illness that is haunting our town! _Every one of the symptoms is the same!_ Please, someone do something!"

The travelers looked at each other. "You have _got_ to be kidding me," Kurogane exclaimed.

"My Takashi is in here," the woman, who had introduced herself as Mrs. Yamazaki, said as she ushered them into a quaintly appointed drawing-room overflowing with rugs, clocks, figurines, and all sorts of other things that would definitely get smashed during the inevitable upcoming fight scene. "Please help him, Doctors. I have faith in you!"

Her role as an expository transition device completed, Mrs. Yamazaki hurried out of the room, never to be seen again. The travelers were left blinking in mutual bemusement at a young boy with short black hair who was sitting on a short couch, a book in his hand and quilts bundled up around his pyjamas. His eyelids drooped heavily, as though he could barely keep them open, and his head threatened to nod forward onto his chest.

"Are you the doctors?" Yamazaki asked.

Fai looked around at the picture they painted: one hulking black-clad ninja (with flawlessly smooth skin and enameled nails,) one wizard surreptitiously trying and not very well succeeding at concealing a sword behind his back, one teenage boy doing pirouettes on the dining room table, one pink-eared muppet, and one practically prepubescent girl. "Yes," he said. "We're... doctors. Doctors, is _exactly_ what we are."

Yamazaki did a slow blink, his eyes sweeping down and then up again. "Doctors of... what exactly?" he asked in tones of polite disbelief.

"Oh, you know, just general..." Fai flapped his hands vaguely. "Doctors of everything. We solve mysteries... go on adventures... get laid. You know, doctor stuff."

"I see," Yamazaki said. Then he suddenly smiled brightly, a wide, patently false smile, and that looked _super_ creepy when someone else did it. "I want to be a doctor when I grow up, too!" he announced. "I'm already studying. I've read dozens and dozens of cases. Did you know that if you drink cold water right after a meal, you'll get cancer? That you can soothe bee stings by taping a copper penny to the welt? And that you can soothe jellyfish stings by peeing on them?"

"I don't think that's quite true..." Syaoran said uncertainly, but Yamazaki barrelled relentlessly over him.

"Did you know that if you sleep with an electric fan on, the fan blades will chop all the molecules of air apart and you'll suffocate to death? It's true, too! Did you ever hear about the case of the woman who went swimming and swallowed some of the lake water, and water, a dozen octopus eggs hatched inside her stomach?"

"Can that really happen?" Sakura gasped, shocked. "How terrible!"

"Oh yes! I know all sorts of interesting animal facts! Did you know that porcupines can throw their quills like darts to scare off enemies? And that chickens are so dumb that they'll look up during a rainstorm and drown?" Yamazaki rattled off cheerfully. "Did you know that lobsters mate for life, and will throw themselves into a pot of boiling water after their mate?"

"I kind of feel like we ought to be doing something here, don't you?" Fai asked Kurogane. "I mean, it seems like irresponsible parenting to just let strangers fill out childrens' head with tall tales like this."

"Well, what did you expect me to do about it?" Kurogane said irritably. "I can't exactly beat up a sick little kid, even if he is being an irritating little shit."

"Did you know that there's a kind of fish called the striped mittenfish which can change from male to female by turning its entire body inside out?" Yamazaki continued, a sadistic gleam in his eye. "Did you know that the only egg-laying mammal in the world is the platypus, and that the first platypus was born when an otter and a duck got fu -"

 **"ENOUGH!"** Abruptly, a swirl of multicolored fairy lights fountained up from the loveseat, obscuring the form of the wisecracking teenager crumpling to the floor. A white light flared upwards and resolved into a flurry of feathers edging a pair of huge white wings mantling an ethereally beautiful humanoid figure. As the initial burst of light dimmed to a more manageable level, Fai was able to make out a flowing mane of white hair, a shimmering robe of heavenly cloth, and impossibly beautiful features set firmly into a permanent scowling bitchface.

"Who the hell are you, pretty boy?" Kurogane demanded.

"I AM YUE, AND I COMMANDETH THOU TO CEASE THINE JABBERING!" the angelic figure snapped, brandishing a flaming sword in Kurogane's direction. His legs and feet did not seem to be entirely there, just trailing off into an indistinct smudge where they seemed to be rooted in Yamazaki's body. His wings rustled dramatically above his head, the feather tips scraping against the ceiling... and there, standing out starkly against Yue's soft blue-white plumage, was the hard-edged familiar outline of one of Sakura's feathers.

 _"WHOA!"_ Syaoran yelled, as his eyes popped fully open for the first time. "It's Princess Sakura's feather! ...Holy crap, is _that_ what feathers feel like to you? I... I've been violated! I don't think I'll ever feel clean again."

"Mokona likes it!" she chirped. "It feels warm and tingly, _deeeeep_ inside!"

"I hath gone to great efforts to maketh sure not to permanently harm any of mine host bodies," Yue said, shooting a dark glare at the slumbering form of Yamazaki, "but thee makes me want to _maketh an exception."_

"What the hell is wrong with this guy's speech?" Kurogane said. "Is that a dialect, or a speech impediment, or what?"

"I don't quite know. I'm not sure some of those words are even real," Fai said thoughtfully. "Syaoran, are you sure that Mokona's translation spell is working correctly?"

"How would I _even know?_ Besides, I'm finding it a little hard to focus right now," Syaoran snapped, "since I just got a _magical champagne enema."_

Sakura gasped and squeaked, turning red and covering her face with her hands. Mokona pouted grotesquely. "Wah! Syaoran-kun is so mean!"

Yue, meanwhile, had not let his audience's inattention dissuade him from his grand monologue. "Pritheest! For many years I hast lived in peace with my host body, Yukito Tsukishiro. But then this foul thing camest, I knoweth not from where," he said, indicating the out-of-place feather with a look of great distaste, "and stuck on mine body. Mine magical powers increased a hundredfold, but to mine great dismay I foundst that my host body couldeth not support such terrific power!

"I had to leavest that body lest I burn it to a husk, yet I canst not surviveth in this world on my own. I hadst to find a new host, only for the process to begineth anew! I amst driven from one harbor in this world to the next without rest, all thanks to this cursedest feather!" he finished, shouting the last few words in a dramatic declamation.

"Eth," he added a moment later, just in case he'd missed one.

"But, but, then this is great!" Sakura exclaimed, wringing her hands. "You don't want the feather, and we do! It belongs to me! Why not just give it to us?"

"Yeah, then you can get back to... doing whatever it is that you do... predating creepily on small children or whatever. And we can all get back in our own bodies and leave this world," Kurogane announced.

Yue turned a scorching scowl on him. Well, or maybe it was the flaming sword that was scorching. "Thieves! Vandals! Dost thee think so easily to rob mine of my power?" he shouted. He raised the flaming sword high, and swung it in a broad attack. "I SAY THOU NAUGHT, VILLAINST!"

Kurogane dodged the first attack without too much trouble, but the fight was on. Syaoran leaped at Yue from behind, tiny stubby legs flailing frantically in an attempt to approximate his usual devastating spin-kicks, but was batted away with a careless brush of Yue's wings. "Mokona, do something!" Syaoran cried. "We have to get that feather! You have my legs - use them to kick him!"

"No!" Mokona cried indignantly, huddling in a corner. "Mokona is a pacifist! Violence is _never the answer._ "

Kurogane was still dodging and blocking Yue's enraged attacks, Souhi leaving a smoking trail through the air as it parried each blow. "It does raise a hell of a question, though!" he called out. "Princess! Get your butt in here and start a new front of attack."

"B-but -" Sakura stammered. "I don't want to _hurt_ him! He didn't _ask_ for my feather!"

"Well, too bad he doesn't feel the same way about us!" Kurogane shouted, using Fai's lightning-fast reflexes to dodge a flaming sword-stroke that would have split him down the middle.

"Look at it this way: we're doing him a _favor,"_ Fai said, calmly and persuasively. "If we can cut that feather off him, then he won't have to go around draining people into comas any more! We'll help him, help ourselves _and_ save the town."

"Oh... that's a good point, I guess..." Sakura said, and she timidly moved to draw Hien and cautiously approach the enraged angel.

Despite her lukewarm acquiescence, however, it was obvious that Sakura didn't _want_ to hurt her opponent; the first swing of her sword was lethargic at best, using only a fraction of Kurogane's formidable muscle-power. Even that might have done a fair amount of damage, though, had her aim not been so wildly off that it was obvious that she was consciously or unconsciously throwing her aim.

Yue's aura flared, the feather stuck in his pinions pulsed, and suddenly bright missiles of fire burst from his wings and exploded across the room. One of them just grazed Sakura's cheek, and she squeaked surprise as she ducked. "Sakura!" Syaoran cried in dismay, and he attempted to throw himself across the room to her aid.

As ridiculous as the sight of a two-pound furball attempted to protect a two-sixty-pound ninja would have been, it was cut off by a sweep of Yue's wings that batted Syaoran back across the room.

Fai dodged two incandescent feather-missiles that streaked across the living room, and considered. This was a disaster, and probably only going to get worse. Kurogane, in Fai's body, was able to hold Yue's attention and dodge his blows - but without access to either Fai's magic or his own, he wouldn't be able to deliver a finishing blow powerful enough to make a dent in such a magically powerful creature. Syaoran was helpless, and Mokona no use at all. In his current condition _he_ was unlikely to be able to offer much help, either. If he'd been able to dodge in quickly and grab the feather from Yue's wings, that might have put an end to the fight - but Sakura simply didn't have the speed to pull that off. And Fai wasn't going to play chicken with Sakura's body.

"You know, this really isn't sustainable long-term," Fai said, casually dodging half of a flying flaming couch and drawing Yue's attention. "You're just going to have to keep going from one host body to another forever, and as you wear out all the humans in this town with magical potential, you'll have to jump faster and faster."

"I AMST AWARE OF THIS FACT, THANK THOU," Yue snarled, drawing back his burning sword for another lash.

"But there _is_ another way... if you could move into a host body that was powerful enough," Fai offered suggestively. "Say, what about a body that had already absorbed the power of _many_ of those feathers?"

Yue swept out a wave of fire that knocked Kurogane, Sakura and Syaoran all to the floor behind the couch, and turned to face Fai with a narrow-eyed scowl. Fai smiled innocently back, tapping on Sakura's chest. "This one," he clarified, in case he hadn't been obvious enough. "Me."

"Fai-san?" Sakura asked nervously.

"Mage, what are you doing?" Kurogane demanded, an edge to his voice that could be worry for Sakura's body (or could just be annoyance at having his only battle this entire story snatched out from under him."

"Forsooth..." Yue whispered, his slit-pupiled eyes going wide with comic surprise. "That body - what power is in it! At last, a vessel potent enough to matchest my own!" He reared up, wings flapping up a hurricane behind him that swept all of the kitschy crotcheted doilies into a windstorm. "Yes! At last I will find a safe haven, a body in which I can rest! Gimme, gimme!"

"Sakuraaaaa! Noooooo!" Syaoran wailed, losing control of his equilibrium at the sight of Sakura in danger. There was a wet _thoop_ noise, as of the seal blowing out of an inner tube, and Syaoran suddenly puffed up to three times his size, becoming a perfect sphere with only tiny stubs of ears and paws hanging out. He hung in midair, bobbing and floating with the air currents of the room, and another swipe of Yue's wings sent him wailing and tumbling slowly towards the window.

"Ooh, that's a good one!" Mokona exclaimed from her corner. "Secret Technique #38: Super Floatation! That one is _super_ useful for ocean worlds, and also waterpark vacations!"

Then, Fai felt Yue moving _through_ him, passing through his body like a cold wind as he tried to flow into his new host.

Several things happened at once. There was a _jolt_ that seemed to shake the universe, although none of the surviving knicknacks shifted on any of the shelves. Fai felt an unmoored, floating sensation, and he seemed to rise in the air and bob there for a moment like a helium balloon, seeing his body - or rather _Sakura's_ body - from the outside. Yue and Sakura's outline seemed to coexist in the body for one incandescent moment - and then the feather, which had been stuck in the pinions of the wings on Yue's back, touched the surface of Sakura's chest. It flared with a brilliant light for a moment, then began to sink into the surface of her chest as though slipping below the surface of the water.

Then Fai felt something take hold of him, like he was on a boat that had just entered a strong current. There was a great rushing sensation, a whipping blur of vision flying past, and then another rock-grinding _jolt_ as he came suddenly to rest -

In his _own_ body. Fai stared at his hands, flexing in front of him in their familiar white sleeves, and then pumped his arms in a gesture of triumph as he grinned madly. "Yes! It _worked!"_ he cried.

The world was still a little blurry around the edges as his soul settled back into its familiar cradle, but Fai could see the streaming river of magic that stretched from his body to Kurogane's, then to Mokona's, then Syaoran's, and finally to Sakura's body. Like a stack of colliding dominoes, each soul was bumped from its misplaced housing and flung helter-skelter through the air to crash back into their home vessel, dislodging the unlucky squatter there to continue on its route. One by one they all ended up sprawling on their asses on the living room rug, comically surprised expressions on their faces.

Last of all, a pinkish-tinted blur of light crashed into Sakura's chest, and the bright winged outline of Yue was shoved rudely into the ether. He hung there for a moment, looking surprised at his sudden discorporation - but the sharp-edged white glow was gone from his wings.

"Thank you, kind travelers," Yue whispered, his voice soft and pleasant now that the furious rage was gone from it. Slowly he began to dissolve, little wisps of him spiralling off into the ether until all that was left was a smiling face and a hypnotic voice. "Thee hath... freed me."

And with that he was gone, leaving behind one final whisper, _"Est."_

"Hoorah!" Syaoran - or rather, the being that was in Mokona's body, whom Fai strongly suspected of actually being Mokona this time - cried, bouncing forward into the ring. "Mokona is Mokona again! Mokona is back to being small, and cute, and fluffy, and not long or dangly or hairy _at all!"_

Mokona - or rather, Syaoran - was curled up in a corner against the wall, rocking slightly and whimpering. To Fai's ear, it sounded more like relief and joy than distress, so he decided not to interfere. "Oh, Xiao Xiao, I missed you so," he was crooning towards his own crotch. "I'll never take you for granted again. _Ever."_

" _Finally!"_ Kurogane roared, flinging his cloak back over his shoulders as he flexed his arms and shoulders and grinned dangerous. "Thank _fuck_ that's over and I'm back in my own _what the fuck did you do to my legs?"_

"But, what happened to Yue?" Sakura (and Fai knew for a sure it was really Sakura, since it certainly wasn't _him,)_ wanted to know, looking worriedly at the patch of air where the angelic and highly ungrammatical being had disappeared.

"I'm sure he'll be fine, Sakura-chan," Fai told her bracingly. "He'll just have to find another host, the same as when he jumped between bodies earlier. But now, since his power level is back to normal, he can bond with a person without draining their energy or risking burning them out."

"Forget the bird," said Kurogane - oh, yes, _wonderfully familiar_ Kurogane, with the growl back in his voice and the scowl back on his face that Fai always wanted to pinch off. "I'm more worried about _us._ Mokona! Can you get us out of this world?"

"Oh, yes!" Mokona said enthusiastically.

"Wait, Kuro-hurry, not so fast..." Fai sidled up to his ninja boyfriend, molding himself up against Kurogane's side. "Now that we're back in our proper bodies, what's the rush? Sakura-chan needs her rest, we still have lots of money to spend in this world, and we still have those rooms back in the inn." He leaned up to breathe directly in the shell of Kurogane's ear. "Those _private_ rooms."

Kurogane's expression shifted, and Fai knew he was considering it. He grinned. It was _so good_ to be in his own body again, and not be afflicted with guilt every time a dirty thought crossed his mind. It had been too long since he'd had a good orgasm... well, all right, technically for _his body_ it had only been a few days, but he hadn't been _in_ it at the time to enjoy it, so it didn't really count.

"Let's go take a nap," Fai wheedled, "and I can show you all the advantages to that nice spa trip your body took while you weren't in it." He ran his instep up along Kurogane's shin suggestively, and even through his trousers Kurogane could obviously feel the difference.

A wicked grin began to grow on his face, one that spelled trouble. "You know what," he said, "Forget the private room. This world has traumatized enough us already, I think it's time to return the favor."

"Seconded and adjourned!" Fai chirped, shooting his hand in the air. He looped his right arm through Kurogane's left, linking their hands, and began dragging his surly puppy off to explore new depths of public depravity. "See you later, Syaoran-kun! Take care of Sakuraaaaaa!"

They vanished out the front door, leaving Syaoran and Sakura alone to explain the wreckage of the sitting room and the unconscious Yamazaki to the homeowner.

Syaoran looked at his two remaining companions. "... So, let's forget this world ever happened and never mention it again?" he tried.

"No, we shouldn't!" Sakura protested vehemently. "Haven't we realized by now, the whole _point_ of this journey is that all memories are precious? Even the ones that weren't entirely nice while they were happening? They still matter because we made them _together;_ they help to _bond_ us together. Without memories, what is the point of us even existing? These precious memories are what we'll look back on later and laugh, and say..."

At this point, Sakura's voice gave out as her eyes rolled back in her head, she toppled to the carpeted floor, and began snoring like a buzzsaw.

"Right," Syaoran said to the empty room.

And they never did.

* * *

~the end

**Author's Note:**

> There are two jokes at various parts of the fic lifted from 'Oglaf,' bonus smutty geek points to anyone who spots them. There are also some scenes that owe a lot to Snopesdotcom, and others that borrowed from the speeches of prominent libertarians.


End file.
